The Vancouver Sun ran an
Associated Press story this week reporting that a special UN investigation is being launched into U.S. drone attacks and targeted killings. It remains to be seen what will come of the UN investigation, given that the US has veto power at the UN.

In 1858, Baptist minister Charles H. Spurgeon made the observation that the general public is insulated from the realities of war...

"It is astonishing how distance blunts the keen edge of
anything that is disagreeable. War is at all times a most fearful
scourge. The thought of slain bodies and of murdered men must always
harrow up the soul; but because we hear of these things in the distance,
there are few Englishmen who can truly enter into their horrors. If we
should hear the booming of cannon on the deep which girdles this island;
if we should see at our doors the marks of carnage and bloodshed; then
should we more thoroughly appreciate what war means. But distance takes
away the horror, and we therefore speak of war with too much levity, and
even read of it with an interest not sufficiently linked with pain."

How prophetic those words are today with war being waged by remote control drones!

Sunday, January 13, 2013

This is what the Earth looks like when the poetic, figurative language of the Bible is read as a science text - square and stationary!

At least that is how Professor Orlando Ferguson portrayed the Earth in his Map of The Square and Stationary Earth back in 1893.

According to the map, the good Professor's view of a square and stationary Earth is supported by "Four hundred passages in the Bible".

As depicted in this comical detail from Prof. Ferguson's map, a round Earth rotating on its axis and circling the sun would have its inhabitants holding on for dear life to keep from being flung off into space by the terrific rate of speed they would be traveling at.

Apparently Albert Einstein had a bit to say about all of that a few years later.

Sunday, January 06, 2013

In an earlier post, I'm Losing (and finding) My Religion - Again, I wrote about the reconciliation of my faith and current scientific understanding of the universe. I have come to believe that the Bible is not a science textbook and that science doesn't answer questions of faith.

We are no longer the center of the solar system or the universe, thank you Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei.

Abandoning a geocentric model of the universe and an egocentric view of creation my faith is no longer threatened by science. I am free to fully experience the wonder and shear awe of our universe without the cognitive dissonance that a literal reading of Genesis brings on.

Last year I bought a new telescope and I am enjoying my rekindled love of the cosmos. While viewing sights such as the Orion Nebula, the Beehive Cluster, and the Pleiades, I can't help but think about our spherical lump of congealed cosmic dust and its place in the cosmos. Could there be other planets out there?

According to John Johnson, assistant professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech, “There’s at least 100 billion planets in the galaxy—just our galaxy, That’s mind-boggling.”

I started wondering how many Earth-like planets are in our galaxy, how many in the universe?

Joe Catanzarite, a scientist with NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, estimates that there might be "two billion Earth analog planets" in our galaxy alone. He
added, "Then you start thinking about other galaxies. There are
something like 50 billion, and if each one has two billion Earthlike
planets, it's mind boggling."

I love it when scientists use technical jargon like "mind-boggling".

So, being neither an astrophysicist nor a mathematician, I'll do my best to "do the math"...

If there are 50 Billion galaxies in the known universe (a conservative estimate according to some scientists, the number could be 100 Billion) and multiply it by 2 Billion Earth-like possibilities, we come up with the "mind-boggling" number of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000. That is a 1 followed by 20 zeros (1 x 1020). I could be wrong about the name, but I think that number is called 100 quintillion.

Perhaps we are not alone in the universe on our little spherical lump of congealed cosmic dust after all.

The Hippie Christian Manifesto

Being A Hippie Christian

Being a Hippie Christian isn't how you dress or what you say as much as it is a total life style. To be a Hippie Christian requires an attitude of the heart that grows out of a personal encounter with the living Christ and overflows into your whole life. Jesus taught about peace and love. Jesus chose the outcasts, He loved the unlovely, He reached out to the rejects. Jesus taught about getting back to the Garden, about having a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe.

For some ancient wisdom on how to live the Hippie Christian life please read Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

About Me

Just an old Long Hair Hippie Jesus Freak from the 60's!
My Hippie name "Cloud" was given to me back in the early 1970's by a Brother in the Lord who called me Cloud because every where he went he would run into me, at the store, the bank, on the street. I seemed to be always following him about like a little black rain cloud, so that became my name - Cloud.
During the Jesus People Movement it was quite normal to be a Hippie and a Christian. I never thought that I had to choose one over the other, for me being a Hippie and a Christian were not mutually exclusive experiences.
Most of us don't like labels, but I have always considered my self to be both, never one or the other. I am a Hippie Christian, a Christian Hippie, a Long Hair Hippie Jesus Freak, whatever - I am just one of God's colorful kids!

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Peace, Love and Light!

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give it to you as the world gives it. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." ~Jesus (John 14:27)

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1John 3:1)

That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9)